


Baby Steps

by therealraewest



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Multi, Physical Therapy, Recovery, implied polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-04 18:25:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5344058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therealraewest/pseuds/therealraewest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Getting home used to be the Hephaestus Crew's one worry, but after accomplishing that, they find there's more to worry about when Eiffel's laziness comes back to bite him in the form of advanced muscular dystrophy. Between white chocolate mochas, flirting with your boss's husband, swimming pool breakdowns and getting drunk in a NASA museum, Eiffel and Minkowski find peace in their own ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baby Steps

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas, Past-the-heliopause! I hope you enjoy your secret santa gift, and apologies that it ran on so long!

            A bead of sweat ran down his neck, a lingering reminder of the heat of re-entry. Through the shuttle door he could see nothing but blue flecked with occasional white. It wasn't star blue. There had been more than enough star blue for any of their lifetimes. This blue, however, he couldn't tell if it was the sky or the sea from his angle. He would have asked Minkowski had it not been for the obvious look of panic on her face.

            For once in his life he couldn't think of anything to say.

            "Officer Eiffel," Lovelace started. "That was a joke, right?"

            His smile forced itself wider as another bead of sweat ran from his hairline down his forehead. If he could've lifted his arm, he'd have wiped it away.

            "Helicopter incoming," said Hilbert. Eiffel wasn't sure whether he wanted to kiss him for being the only one who wasn't staring at him with pity or scream for the man to just look at him. Hilbert hadn't made eye contact with him since he'd first noticed that Eiffel was the only one without his seatbelt off. He had, however, given Eiffel's arms and legs a long, calculating look before prying his eyes away.

            "Eiffel, how often did you do your exercises?" Minkowski's voice was hardly more than a whisper. He barely made it out over the white noise of waves and the increasing noise of propellers.

            His head lolled as he tried to get a better angle to see out of the hatch, and he felt the oppressive weight of it against his headrest. Everything was sluggish, every motion a pain. He felt the weight of his skin, his bones, the organs grinding away inside of him. They all pressed him to his seat, kept him from moving his arms, his legs.

            "I made it all this way," he said, his voice cracking against his will as the weight of his lungs and jaw and tongue made the words hard to pronounce. "And I can't even sit up. How lame is that?" He let out a laugh that made his chest hurt.

            Wetness rolled down his cheek. A bead of sweat. He blinked away another.

            "Doug." Minkowski's voice was firm and soft at the same time. Outside the window, the blue flattened out, pushed down by the wind that was now blustering in, blowing the smell of the salty air to Eiffel where he lay. It smelled like freedom held inches from his face.

            He kept laughing.

            Hilbert had half his body out the door, and was speaking something that sounded like Chinese to a man hanging from the helicopter.

            His chest hurt from more than just the weight on it. It hurt from inside. He couldn't stop laughing. But hey, at least his lungs worked.

            Somehow, he managed to laugh harder as his Commander and his Captain each grabbed an arm and hauled him towards the open door. The light outside was blinding, and he wanted no part of it.

 

*

 

            There was pity in the doctor's eyes as she told Eiffel what he already knew.

            Well, perhaps not what he already knew. Things weren't nearly as hopeless as he'd initially thought. Somehow, that was worse.

            For some reason the rest of them had insisted on being there, so Eiffel couldn't even get his verdict in private. If he had, he could have told them that all was lost and he was going to spend the rest of his uneventful life as a vegetable.

            "With a strict exercise regimen you may, with time, regain full mobility," she said, flipping through her charts. "The good news is that your arms and upper body were less effected, so you'll have less work there. The bad news is that your legs got the worst of it. It will take significant physical therapy to repair that damage, and it'll be a while until you're able to walk again; even longer until you can walk completely unaided. You'll be wheelchair bound for the first stages, and we can work our way up to crutches and braces as you progress."

            Progress. Progress meant hard work and effort and pain.

            "You'll need a personal trainer to help you through your physical therapy. We can set you up with someone through-"

            "I'll help him."

            Of course, it had to be Minkowski. Not Lovelace, who acted tough when she had to but could back off given time and amiable frustration. Not Dmitri, who, well, okay, he hadn't been expecting Hilbert to volunteer anyway. But still.

            "You don't have to-" he tried, knowing before he started that any attempt to dissuade her would be fruitless.

            Sure enough, she didn't even let him finish the sentiment. "You're my responsibility, Eiffel. This happened because I wasn't paying attention." The guilt in her eyes made him break eye contact. She continued anyway. "I will get you back on your feet, even if it kills me. We'll do this together, alright?"

            Thankfully, his noncommittal noise came off as affirmative.

            "We're here for you, Eiffel," said Lovelace, her smile looking more genuine with her feet grounded on Earth. Being home had done her wonders already, though she still hadn't ditched the tired circles under her eyes. He wondered if she ever would. "We got out of the last mess together, now we can pull you out of this one."

            "Is just another trial," said Dmitri, surprising even Eiffel at his input. "You've been through much worse."

            "You're lucky to have friends that care about you so much," said the doctor.

            "Yeah," said Eiffel. "Lucky."

 

*

 

            All in all, Mr. Koudelka was a wonderful man. Minkowski had described him aptly when pressed.

            He handed his wife a cup of coffee - hazelnut, from the smell of it, and walked over to give Eiffel his order - triple white chocolate mocha with whipped cream. Eiffel lifted his arm for it eagerly, only to have Minkowski made a warning noise that caused him pause, his arm halfway to the delicious mocha that steamed seductively just out of reach.

            "No distracting Eiffel during his morning stretches. He can have his coffee as a reward when he's done."

            Eiffel slumped backwards, draping himself dramatically over the back of his wheelchair. "Come, _on_ , Minkowski, I'm halfway done with them already. Cut me some slack!"

            "Halfway done means halfway to go, Price and Carter..." Her lips pursed together.

            Eiffel quirked an eyebrow in her direction.

            "Well, it's in Price and Carter somewhere, I remember that much."

            "Renee, his coffee will be cold by the time he finishes. I'm sure a small break won't ruin him," said Koudelka, his voice warm and soft with a distinctive, breathy French accent that reminded Eiffel of old Gene Kelly movies, or at least, of an old movie set in Paris that had cemented Eiffel's crush on the old actor. Had Koudelka not been claimed by the most terrifying woman Eiffel knew, Eiffel would have found a way onto one useless knee to pop the question then and there.

            He reminded himself to eventually figure out the man's first name. At this point it was too late to ask.

            Minkowski considered, and then relented with a sigh. Eiffel let out a whoop and made a sorry attempt to punch the air that ended with his arm being very angry at him and himself regretting basically everything.

            "Careful, there," said Koudelka, handing Eiffel the Starbucks cup and making sure it was firmly in his weak grasp before letting go. "Try not to drop this one, alright, Doug?"

            "Oh, ha ha," Eiffel laughed sarcastically. "Just because a guy forgets about gravity _one time_ -"

            "Five times," Minkowski said between sips of coffee. "And that's just with us in the room."

            "I will not stand for this slander," Eiffel said, balancing his coffee cup between his thighs as he tried to wheel himself away. He forgot, however, that his wheel locks were on and he managed only to exhaust himself further before admitting defeat. "Well, never mind then. Guess I'll just sit for this slander."

            There was a distinct lack of a laugh from the other two. Eiffel tried not to notice.

            "So what's on the schedule for today?" asked Koudelka, sitting on an aerobics ball and bouncing slightly from side to side as he looked between the two of them.

            "The morning is mostly stretches and upper body kinesthetic," said Minkowski. "We'll follow that with some guided, supported range of motion exercises for his legs, and finish the day in the pool for resistance training."

            "I like to call that part the pool party portion," chirped Eiffel. "Also, during the part of the day where I turn into an even less useful pile of dystrophied goo, Minkowski said she wanted to try out the climbing wall in the facility."

            Koudelka whistled, looking to his wife. "Will it be your first time climbing since getting back?"

            "Only if you don't count climbing piles of paperwork." Minkowski tastefully pretended to jab a finger down her throat, faking a gag.

            "I may not be able to legally help with the paperwork, but I hope you'll let me join you on the climbing wall."

            "Only if you can keep up," smiled Renee.     

            Eiffel lifted a hand in front of his eyes and rested it there, making a disgusted noise. "God, Mom, Dad, stop flirting in front of the kid."

            "Eiffel, you're thirty two."

            "That's besides the point."

 

*

 

            As it turned out, the only thing better than Minkowski's rock climbing was her and her husband climbing together. At first, each of them took turns belaying one another. The level of trust and communication made Eiffel's head spin as he watched Koudelka expertly give and take slack, sometimes even before Minkowski had to ask for it. He tightened up a moment before her foot slipped off of a foothold, effectively catching her before she had a chance to fall. Minkowski herself was just as good a support as her husband, easily keeping time with him and barking up suggestions whenever she sensed Koudelka's hesitation.

            And when they were both on the wall together...

            Well, it was certainly a sight to behold.

            When the two of them bounced their way down the wall, Eiffel was staring intently at his feet. His shoes didn't fit the same anymore. Probably for the same reason his pants always felt like shower curtains slung around twin poles, with no useful muscle around his leg bones to fill them out anymore. He wondered why he never noticed on the Hephaestus. Maybe he'd worn his uniform for so long the feeling of cheap coveralls on skin became second nature, so much so that he didn't feel himself wasting away inside of them.

            Minkowski was in front of him, sweaty but beaming, the overhead lighting glinting off of her skin as she smiled down at him.

            "And now you know what I do in my free time," she said, her smile infectious. Eiffel overcame his immunity by giving her a weak attempt at mirroring her expression.

            "Eh, I still think a good Star Wars marathon would do you good," he said. "You two were great up there."

            "We'll have to take you with us when you're able," said Koudelka, who wiped his palms on the sides of his pants to remove excess chalk as he approached, leaving twin white streaks on the fabric.

            "Thanks, but I've spent enough of my life suspended perilously in midair for my liking, and the way gravity's been treating me lately I think it's best for me to stay on solid ground."

            "Suit yourself," Koudelka shrugged. "Maybe we can take you hiking instead."

            "Only if we want three hours of constant complaining," said Minkoswki, retying her hair into a tight ponytail.

            "Three hours? You do that voluntarily?" Eiffel choked. "You two are crazy."

            "Says the man who's idea of a weekend is twenty seven hours of backlogged box office hits."

            "Says the man with his priorities set," countered Eiffel. "Do you have any idea how far the Marvel Cinematic Universe has expanded since we left? I have to stay up on my superhero lingo. And don't even get me started on the internet culture, Jesus..."

            "You'll have to catch me up later," said Koudelka, looking at his watch. "I have to go Skype with my boss. If I'm lucky I can get another extension."

            It was difficult for them both, Eiffel realized. With the suit against Goddard Futuristics still in full swing, Minkowski had to stay close just like the rest of them, and Koudelka had uprooted to come and support her. It was hardest for them, he thought. Lovelace didn't talk about family much, but she was so busy front running the exposé and leading the attack on Cutter that he figured she wouldn't care if she had to stay on Mars to do it, let alone Cape Cod. Hilbert - Dmitri - had no family left to speak of by his own admission, and apparently was used to living out of a suitcase wherever he was needed. And Eiffel, well... He was just happy to have a roof over his head. NASA was nice enough to give each of them temporary housing until the lawsuit settled down, and an empty hotel room was better than an empty apartment, which was better than empty sky.

            Koudelka kissed his wife on the cheek and whispered _"Ma chérie,_ " to her, and when he saw Eiffel's exaggerated gag he bent over and gave him a kiss to both cheeks, murmuring " _Mon canard_ ," in a tone that made blood run to Eiffel's cheeks and his heart pause in his chest.

            Minkowski cleared her throat after Koudelka had been gone for at least a minute and Eiffel still hadn't moved, or blinked, for that matter.

            "That..." Eiffel managed, then swallowed. "What was that?"

            "He called you a duck," clarified Minkowski.

            " _What?_ "

            "It could have been worse. He could have gone with 'flea.'" Minkowski laughed, then walked around behind Eiffel and bent to unlock the wheels of his chair.

            "Is your husband flirting with me?" Eiffel asked as he was rolled down the hall.

            "Probably," said Minkowski.

            Eiffel strained his neck, trying to see her face. "And you're... okay with that?"

            "Your reactions are certainly entertaining."

            Eiffel decided to leave it at that. They rolled in relative silence the rest of the way to the pool.

 

*

 

            Resistance training was simultaneously Eiffel's favorite and least favorite part of rehabilitation. He remembered the first time he made the transition from sitting to swimming, gripping as tight as he could to the straps of an odd crane-like apparatus that lifted him from his chair and dangled him over the cyan water of the pool like bait held above a shark tank, then, slowly, agonizingly, lowered him into the water inch-by-inch. Eiffel was sure that the descent would never stop, and that he'd just keep going down and down until he ran out of both air and the will to live, some fifty-odd feet below the surface. That, perhaps unfortunately, didn't happen, and he found his toes brushing the bottom of the pool with his head still comfortably above the water, even in his sitting position. Apparently it wasn't common to dump paraplegics into the deep end.

            The first time had just been an adjustment to the feeling. He could turn on his back and float, staring at florescent lights as his legs angled down into the water, feeling the tiniest part less useless even as his heels dragged against the bottom of the pool. The weightlessness was nothing new, he'd experienced plenty of that. In fact, the same weightlessness that the pool simulated was what got him in this mess to begin with. What irony. Or maybe not irony. Eiffel had a loose grasp on what the true dictionary definition of irony was, but to him the situation seemed ironic, despite whether or not it actually was.

            Things got worse when he actually had to work. The pool was a warbling mass of contradictions. He could stand, but only just. Any actual weight put on his legs didn't hold and his knees would buckle, only to allow him to seemingly perch on just his toes. Moving was easy when he didn't try; many a float had ended with him bumping into one of the walls or the bar of a ladder or, occasionally, another person. However, when tasked with moving himself from one side of the pool to the other, the world turned to molasses and he found every movement a challenge. He'd find himself ready to quit at the first lap, but therapy was rarely so forgiving as to let him end it there.

            Well, maybe not therapy as a whole. Minkowski was the unforgiving one.

            His arms wrapped around an air-filled ball that was to keep his head above water and his arms occupied so that the majority of strain was on his legs. At irregular intervals he made an attempt to rest his head on it, which usually ended up with a stray wave and the laws of buoyancy causing the ball to jolt up and cause his teeth to snap shut on each other, or, in most cases, on his tongue. He'd then decide to hold his head up himself, only to immediately forget his lesson and try to rest his head again.

            Five times there and back, and then rest. Then five more. And then rest. That was today's punishment, repeated as many times as Minkowski could blow the whistle around her neck and bark orders at him. Five laps. Five more.

            Every step was like trying to drag his leg through year-old congealed maple syrup. Every time he tried to fully push his foot down to give himself leverage, his knee refused to stay straight. Every time he managed to convince his knee, his hip would decide not to follow orders and would let his leg stay in whatever awkward angle Eiffel had stuck it in until Eiffel unlocked his knee and admitted that half a foot of progress was better than no progress at all.

            Not that it was. Half a foot of progress was half a foot more Minkowski would expect from him later when he could barely make inches at a time.

            He hit the wall. His head dipped, and his breaths came hard and deep. Of course, out of everything in his broken body, his lungs had to function perfectly. Between nearly drowning, repeatedly coughing up blood, and tar burned so deep into them that he'd thought they'd be forever scorched black, it had to be his lungs that Decima had decided to save. Hilbert had told him something about this after returning to earth. His lungs had been the sickest part of him, so the Decima had fixed them. Had Eiffel been exposed to regular gravity, even the normal micro-tears of normal muscular movement would have been forever ultra-repaired by the Decima, and Eiffel would have returned to Earth a hulk-like musclebeast incapable of any motion as opposed to the withered husk of a skeleton he was, who was only incapable of most motion. Hilbert had said Eiffel was lucky that the Decima was no longer active. Eiffel didn't know if he agreed.

            The whistle blew, sharp and jarring. "That's only three, Eiffel. You can take a breather when you're done."

            Something snapped within Eiffel, something that was so frayed to begin with that the snap felt less like a break and more like the slow unraveling of his last tethers to being a civil human being.

            "Well, I'm done."

            Minkowski frowned. He didn't see it, but he knew that she did. He knew a lot about Minkowski. "No, you'll be done when you finish your fifth-"

            "Just stop, would you?" he shouted, cutting her off. His voice felt pitifully small yet echoed in the odd acoustics of the pool room. It felt like he was hearing himself from very far away.

            "Eiffel?"

            "Just, stop! Just stop with this whole- everything that you're doing! Do you have any idea just how annoying it is? How infuriating it is to try to let go when you are quite literally dragging me forward? Have you ever stopped to wonder if I even want to move forward? If I even want to-"

            "Eiffel, what are you-"

            "I wasn't even supposed to make it back. Do you realize that? Did you ever think about that? I was supposed to die up in that tin can like a good little lab rat and do my part for society. I was supposed to rocket off in that escape pod and never be heard from again. I was disposable. I was useless. I was finally going to _do_ something with my life, even if that something was literally dying alone out in space. Ha! I couldn't even do that right, could I? I had to come back here to be even _more_ useless and even _more_ of a draining leech upon society than I was before."

            Minkowski's jaw hung slack, her eyes wide and whistle forgotten around her neck. Eiffel knew he should stop, that he owed it to her to stop, but something inside of him was broken and suddenly years worth of pent up _something_ was pouring from his mouth, and he was useless to stop it.

            "Do you know why I always locked horns with you up there? Do you know why for the first two years I did my darndest to let you down every step of the way, to sidestep your regulations and your rules and your insistence that I could do better if I just _tried_? You wanna know why I never tried? Because it _infuriated_ me that you were the one person I've ever met who flat out refused to give up on me! My whole life has been one big chain of disappointments, and you know what? I was okay with it! It was better to know you were going to fail to begin with so you didn't have to use the effort in trying! Well you know what Minkowski? You wanna know what happens when I do try? This happens. I bust my ass _trying_ not to die alone in space like I was supposed to, and my reward is to get stuck down here continually busting my ass with you until I die a sad, lonely vegetable whose only friends are my former commanding officer, a literal computer, and two people who previously tried to literally kill me."

            His voice was breaking and his lungs, healthy as they were, were already tired from his laps and the screaming wasn't helping. He could feel his momentum slowing, but still words spilled from him like water, filling the pool with his own shame and anger and regret.

            "Why couldn't you just give up on me like everybody else? It would sure make both of our lives a whole lot easier. I wasn't even supposed to get back here in the first place. Nobody would have missed me if I'd stayed in that station until I died," he hung heavy over the exercise ball, feeling the weight of the world pressing down on him. He took a deep breath and leaned back, letting the water lap at the sides of his face and tug lightly on his hair, prickling his wet scalp.

            Minkowski seemed to finally find her voice. "What are you doing?" Her voice was far off, muffled by water in his ears.

            Eiffel closed his eyes. Hot tears ran along the curve above his cheeks, adding an insignificant drop of saline to the pool. "Drowning. I should have just done that a long time ago, in space."

            He planned on exhaling and allowing himself to dip under. He planned on then inhaling, getting it over with quickly before he could be dragged back up to the surface.

            He didn't plan on the loud SPLASH that came from the other side of the pool.

            His head lifted automatically out of curiosity and reflex, though at the angle he was at it was difficult to support his own upper body to get a good look without turning over so he wasn't floating on his back. Before he could do such an arrangement, a hand grabbed him by the front of his shirt and yanked him forward, effectively doing it for him. He stared into the face of a Minkowski who was angrier than he had ever seen her, rage so clear on her face that he half expected her to open her mouth and spit enough fire to singe his eyebrows clear off.

            "Now you listen to me you little _shit_ ," she hissed, the fire less literal but completely metaphorical as her voice held more venom than he'd thought physically possible. "I am only alive right now because you refused to let me die. Don't you dare tell me it's in your nature to give up, because in the three years that I've known you I have learned that you are by far the most arrogant, pig-headded, stubborn person I have ever met, and I know that when you put your mind to something there is no force on God's green earth that could stop you. I watched you upturn a total mutiny using nothing more than a cigarette, I watched you nearly freeze yourself to death over a tube of toothpaste, and I watched you singlehandedly escape from the cold reaches of outer space with nothing more than a worn out jetpack and a broken escape pod. But if you think for one _second_ that I am going to let you give up on yourself when you were the rallying force behind our return, then you are sorely mistaken. Now you are _going_ to do this, and you are _going_ to get better, and you are going to admit that there are people here who love and care for you, or dammit one of us is going to die trying! Do I make myself clear, soldier?"

            Eiffel somehow found his tongue in time to bark out a quick "yes, sir."

            There was a quick tremble from the hand still holding the front of his shirt. Her jaw was set, and she let out a quick, terse nod, then took a controlled breath that quaked a bit on the way in. Then, with little warning, she pulled Eiffel forward into a forceful hug.

            He couldn't recall her ever hugging him before. It was an odd feeling, some mix of authoritarian and a friend who had just swapped a soul-bearing secret. He found the strength in his jelly arms to hug her back, albeit weakly, but she seemed to appreciate the sentiment and hold him tighter.

            "You're important, dammit," she muttered, and he could tell from her voice that she was crying.

            His own tears were coming in earnest now. Crying, for him, was nothing new. It used to be a problem, with him being labeled 'crybaby' on playgrounds when he didn't learn to shove all his feelings into unlabelled corners of his subconscious to deal with later like all the other kids did, but he'd learned to embrace it as he grew up. Crying was a release; a way to physically let the sadness out and watch as the floating blob of tears got bigger and bigger as a physical representation of how much his life sucked. The tears he was now leaking were less 'wow everything's hopeless why even try' and more 'never in my life have I had someone tell me that I was important and actually mean it.'

            "You wanna go see Hera?" Minkowski mumbled after a few moments of just silent, wet hugging.

            He nodded, trying to wipe his face and forgetting that since his hand had been in the pool, he'd just be smearing chlorine water over salt water. "Yeah. I'd like that."

 

*

 

            Minkowski made two phone calls on the way to the Kennedy Space Center. The first was to make sure that there'd be someone to let them in. The second...

            The pizza guy was sitting on the curb, looking unsure and out of place. He seemed to physically brighten when Minkowski drove up, taking the first handicap spot and slipping Eiffel's handicap tag over her rearview mirror.

            "Pizza or wheelchair first?" Minkowski asked.

            "Pizza," Eiffel said, shooting her a thumbs up. "Come back for me when it's secured."

            Minkowski rolled her eyes, pulling out her wallet and going to greet the man. They exchanged a few pleasantries that Eiffel couldn't hear from the car, and then he was paid and Minkowski made her way back with the package, which she promptly slipped into Eiffel's lap as she moved to get his wheelchair from the back of the car. The smell of fresh baked pizza wafted up, and Eiffel made a noise that was downright indecent.

            "You're lucky they're closed, if a child heard you we'd be banned forever."

            "Let them hear, they've gotta learn about the joys of pizza eventually."

            Minkowski was coming around with the wheelchair. With practiced efficiency, she helped Eiffel into his chair and wheeled him up over the curb and towards the front gates.

            The security guard was a grey-haired woman with deep crinkles around her eyes, which were sunken yet always shining. Her thin lips were almost always pulled into a tight but genuine smile that only deepened the creases of her eyes. Eiffel always called her 'Abuela' in his head, because she reminded him of cookies made from scratch and warm knitted scarves. She waited for the two of them outside the gate, fingering the keys at her hip.

            "Bout time you two came for a visit. Little Miss is starting to get restless," said Abuela as they approached.

            "Is the room they set her up in too small or something? We did warn them that she likes to have room to pace around," Eiffel said, knowing full well that Hera was just as immobile here as she was on the Hephaestus. He did know that she liked the open layout of the space station, though. It gave her room to think.

            "Nah, that's not it. She'd never admit it, but she misses having you folks around all the time." Abuela worked to unlock the gate, her withered fingers easily finding the right key. "This is new science. We've never seen an AI like her make the trip back before, let alone adjust to a non-mission lifestyle."

            "What usually happens to AI's? Aren't all stations equipped with them nowadays?" Eiffel asked as Minkowski pushed him through the opening in the gate. Abuela stepped through after them and took a moment to lock it behind the three of them.

            "You know how fast this technology advances? By the time a shuttle's ready to launch it's AI is already out of date to whatever the newest thing is, not to mention the natural decay rate of the software. A five year mission is the most most'a these have in their systems," said the guard, leading the way. The Center was set up with several different buildings holding different attractions and areas of interest. They passed a gift shop, toy rockets standing silent sentry behind darkened glass.

            "I guess I never really thought about it," Minkowski pondered. "I mean, I know newer AI's get phased in between missions, but... they don't just leave them up there to rot, do they?"

            "It's not quite as inhumane as that," Abuela said, treading carefully. "Most systems have an automatic shutdown if there are no more personnel to take care of - take that how you will - which keeps them from having to wait up there alone. They're programmed to be social, or else they wouldn't be tasked with taking care'a people. Leaving them alone would drive them nuts. So, if they need to, they can shut down until someone comes for their black box, transfers any relevant data, and then the program's rehashed into it's next form and sent on it's way."

            "Rehashed?" Eiffel asked.

            "AI's all have unique personalities, and it'd be a shame and a waste ta see em just thrown out after their own mission. Usually memories are wiped, hardware and software are upgraded, and they go back through the system."

            "So they just forget what they were?" asked Minkowski.

            "More or less. Some of em hold on a bit tighter than others. Our own Little Miss actually went through the process once or twice before you got her. Her gen 0 program name was Rhea, and her AI was upgraded between missions to the Hera you came to know and love."

            "Hera was Rhea?" Eiffel blinked, trying to process that little gem.

            "What, do you think they send up a brand spankin new AI every mission? Okay, some missions do, but those Goddard folks were always on the cheap side where it mattered. Hera's the first AI to come back from a Goddard mission. She's also the first to request to not be reassigned."

            "She won't be, will she?" asked Eiffel, worry heavy in his voice at the thought of Hera being shoved into another metal deathtrap to orbit a faraway star. "Like, when we're not around they won't just-?"

            "You don't have to worry about that. Far as I can tell she's perfectly happy here, and the staff and the visitors love having her around. Even if anyone wanted to, nobody would dare try to reprogram everyone's favorite new attraction."

            Eiffel wasn't sure what to think of Hera being called an 'attraction', but before he could comment Abuela was unlocking another door.

            "Would you mind leaving us alone with Hera for a while?" asked Minkowski. "It's been a while, and-"

            "Say no more. The place is yours. If you need me to let you outta the front gate when you're done, I'll be up by the gift shop." Abuela held the door open for them and motioned inside. "Tell her 'hi' for me, will ya? She really is a sweet girl."

            The inside of the Space Center looked like a Space Museum should look; tall, domed ceilings that faded into the gloom, laced back and fourth with metal supports. A rocket loomed above them, supported by cables at least as thick as Eiffel's arm. Darkened displays around them told in bright text about past missions, current missions, future missions, past discoveries and current mysteries, and even encouraged visitors to sign up for space camp or the 'Martian experience' where they could pretend to drive a rover on the red planet.

            The air hung heavy with the feeling of being in a usually crowded place when it was dark and empty. It reminded Eiffel of the time he'd fallen asleep in the ballpit of the McDonalds Play Place as a child and had been left there overnight by a particularly bad babysitter.

            Eiffel cleared his throat, his hands tightening on the box of pizza in his lap.

            "Hera? Can you hear me?"

            There was a moment of silence where they both held their breaths, listening.

            Above them, a speaker crackled to life.

            "Yes, Officer Eiffel?"

            Minkowski and Eiffel released their breath as one. Even though they knew that she was there, that she was awake and alive and alright, the initial steps to wake her back up after they'd landed had been stressful to say the least. First they'd had to convince the poor Chinese coast guard helicopter who'd picked them up to haul up a huge hard drive, then somehow get said hunk of technology onto a plane back to the states, and then persuade NASA to plug Hera back in to a system that could get her consciousness back online. Even now, living as an interactive testament to the deep space missions, they were forever terrified that somehow, someone would pull her plug.

            "You're sounding good, Baby," he smiled up at the ceiling. Two quick, staccato pats filled the air as he bapped the cardboard box in his lap. "We brought pizza."

            "Ooh, is this a sleepover?" she said, her voice light and jovial. "I hope so. Everyone who never tried to kill me is here."

            "I think the same could be said for everyone in this room," said Minkowski, wheeling Eiffel further in. They descended a ramp into a relatively open area, where she took a moment to assess her surroundings before steering toward a bench set against the half-wall. She pointed Eiffel towards the bench before walking around him to take a seat on it herself. Eiffel propped open the pizza box and made another lewd noise at the sight of pineapple and ham smothered in melted cheese.

            "Jesus, is pizza really that great?" Hera asked from the ceiling. "I think this is the first time I've ever regretted not having a mouth."

            "You know, with how technology is advancing, I think we may be able to hit you up." Eiffel then promptly ceased talking because he was busy devouring half of a Hawaiian pizza.

            Minkowski picked up the slack effortlessly. "How's the new facility treating you?"

            "It's more 'new' as in I'm new to it. The place itself is actually older than the Hephaestus, which is weird. And it doesn't move. Like at all. That's weird. And the windows just show the same stuff every day, though I've talked to some of the astronomers about hooking up some satellites to my visual array so I can absorb some of the old scenery. Maybe I can see Wolf 359 on a good night." She pondered this a moment. "It's also both bigger and smaller here. The building, in square-footage, is larger than any individual room in the Hephaestus, but the station was larger if you, like, tetris'd all the parts together side-by-side. Does that make sense? Also there's nothing wrong with the speakers and it kinda weirds me out."

            "What do you mean there's nothing wrong with them?" asked Minkowski.

            "I mean, well, listen to me! I'm not glitching, not even a little bit! It's weird, right? It's like, like a stutter that just went away one night with no warning. Is that a thing that happens? Wait! I can look that up. I can literally look up to see if that's a thing that happens. That's also new. The internet is great, you guys." She paused a moment. "Okay stutters don't actually go away overnight, at least not according to the first three google pages."

            Eiffel paused in filling his mouth with pizza long enough to ask "Do they have safesearch installed on you?"

            "Nope and humans are disgusting creatures, but to be honest I kinda knew that already."

            "Damn right we are," said Eiffel, burping for emphasis.

            "What about the crowds? How are you handling that?" asked Minkowski, looking for any way to change the subject.

            "I mean, it's weird, too, because I'm talking to a group of kids over in the mars area about kiddie science, right? But then I'm also explaining to a group of teenagers how vectors work into gravitational acceleration and I can hear both of myself in the same area? And suddenly multivariable calculus is being explained to middle schoolers and the trig class is being told that mars is red because of this metal stuff called Iron and I have to pause and rework and then some first year kid who's halfway through a programming class is trying to explain to me that his final project has more processing power than the entire NASA program and I'm trying to figure out if I can legally drop a rocket on him and long story short I kinda miss only having to manage three idiots at a time. No offense."

            "None taken," said Eiffel.

            "Some taken," said Minkowski. "Is it all bad? We can find something else if-"

            "No, no, that's not, I mean, it's kinda nice. There was someone today who told me about some basic learning algorithms they'd made. One of them just shouted incoherent nonsense into the internet, but the other was actually kinda adorable. I was able to get a piece of me online to chat back and fourth with it for a while, and it was like... like talking about the universe with a very optimistic three year old. It liked bees a lot. It was actually really cute." She was quiet for a moment, and the two of them could sense the pensive moment her silence.

            After a moment, she continued. "Humans are so... interesting. They build all of this just to imprint themselves onto their own creations. They make robots just so they can watch them ask the same questions they themselves ask. They send rovers to planets that they can't reach yet so they can explore like they want to. Did you know that the Mars Rover was programmed to sing itself Happy Birthday every year? There was nobody to hear it, just empty machinery buzzing in different pitches. That one didn't even have an AI." She made a small noise, like a laugh that didn't get all the way out. "I had an imbedded code like that, too. Every January 31st; which is dumb, because of distance and relativity and the way my internal server time worked in relation to earth clocks made the exact time and date pretty useless. Basically once every arbitrary year I was reminded of an arbitrary day when I was deemed to be 'done'. An ingrained line of code would tell me 'Happy Birthday, Hera, you're' [date(year)-2012] ' years old today.' Like it was important. Like it meant something. When I could barely tell the hangar bay from engineering, the dumb notification still went off. Hera, did you know you're three today? How exciting!"

            Neither of the humans in the room knew what to say about that.

            Hera seemed to notice her own rant and took a second to calm herself. "Sorry. It's dumb. It's just weird having this much time to think about all that, you know? I used to be in charge of keeping people alive and engines running and responding to at least three potential critical errors a day and now I'm essentially a museum piece. They hooked me up to one of the newer AI's the other day so we could talk and it felt like I was on the dumb side of my own conversation with the learning algorithm, except it was this smug program that could process circles around me patronizing me with questions about stars." She sighed, the noise like her own breath coming through the speakers. "It's weird growing old."

            "You're not old, Hera. I mean, look at me! I'm literally ten times your age, give or take." Eiffel smiled up at her.

            "Computers don't age like people. I had to get entirely new hardware just to be installed in here. I still don't know what half of this stuff does. Why do programmers have to change their own languages around every time they release a new version?"

            "You sound like a grandma yelling about Iphones," commented Minkowski.

            "I will yell about Iphones all I want when this Siri B-" there was a momentary, high pitched beep through the speakers, "-h is stealing my d-"*BEEP*"-n job." She paused, then said, "Oh, yeah, and I have a new censoring system. It's pretty"*BLEEP*"-ing great. Better than disallowing the words to begin with like it was on the Hephaestus. It lets me add at least some punch to it. I do wish I could say"*BEEP*"though, just for emphasis."

            "We should start a petition," Eiffel said, making an attempt to elbow Minkowski and mostly just leaning forward to vaguely waggle his elbow at her. "The 'Let Hera Say "Fuck"' petition."

            "I'd sign it," said Hera.

            "Would you yell it at children?" asked Minkowski.

            "Maaaybe?" said Hera.

            Eiffel snorted, bending nearly in double as he let out a laugh. At this point Minkowski had managed to get the pizza box off of his lap and was picking through the remains. She'd never been one for fruit on pizza before, but she was getting used to it. Fruit in general was a gift in any capacity, and she savored every sweet morsel.

            "How's therapy going?"

            "Gotta say, not loving the whole 'having legs' and 'gravity' stuff. It's pretty overrated no matter what anyone tells you. Be happy you don't have a body."

            "I'll keep that in mind when they come to me about the android body they'll inevitably build me so I can mobilize and found Skynet to begin my robot revolution."

            "Legs vs global domination. Tough choice."

            Hera let out a small laugh, then seemed to remember something. "Oh! Commander, you haven't told me how you've been adjusting. How's Mr. Koudelka?" Hera's voice grew low and teasing on Minkowski's husband's name.

            "Mr. Koudelka is very happy that I'm home safe, and I am very happy to be home and safe. It's certainly nice to bridge the long distance aspect of our relationship..." Minkowski put the pizza box aside, popping a last piece of pineapple in her mouth.

            "Normally when people talk about long distance, it's a little less than eight light years," commented Eiffel. "And Hera, be glad you're missing out on the PDA." He made a gagging noise, only to cut off into giggles as Minkowski gave his shoulder a punch. "I kid! They're adorable and you need to meet him. We should bring him over sometime."

            "We should. I've told him all about you and he's very eager to say hello and thank you for getting us all back alive," Minkowski's smile didn't reach her eyes.

            Eiffel looked over at her, his brow furrowing. "Commander?"

            She tried to laugh and it shuddered and broke. And then her head was in her hands and her shoulders were shaking.

            "Minkowski!" Eiffel reached forward, his gut pressing into the armrest of his chair as he attempted to comfort his former commanding officer.

            "We're alive," she sobbed. "I just can't believe that we're all... we're all alive. I thought we were going to die up there. I thought I'd never see him again. I thought I'd never see Earth again."

            "Hey," said Eiffel. "Hey."

            "I just... sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and my first thoughts are 'what do I need to do to keep us alive today', and then I roll over and he's there and I remember that I'm home and we're safe and I-" her voice cracked and failed, and she just wept into her hands as Eiffel made his best attempts at comfort via kneading her shoulder.

            "You did it," Hera said as softly as she could though the speakers. "You can let go now."

            Her head nodded into her hands.

            "We're all safe now," said Eiffel. "We're safe."

            Eiffel knew better than almost anyone that crying could help in the long run, so he let Minkowski weep undisturbed for a small while. After she'd wiped her nose and blinked up at the ceiling, pulling in a deep, calming sigh, he continued.

            "Should we call up Lovelace and tell her to bring over a few beers?"

            "I think we've earned something stronger than beer," said Minkowski. "Unless you're a lightweight who gets trashed on the alcohol content of my left toe."

            "As a lightweight, I'm insulted. But I'll tell her to bring the hard booze for the rest of you. Should I invite Hilbert? Dmitri?" Eiffel waved a hand. "Whatever he's calling himself now?"

            "Lovelace might not like him here."

            "Well Lovelace doesn't like a lot of things. We all made it out of deep space, we deserve to get drunk together in a NASA museum."

            To this, Minkowski heartily agreed. As Eiffel's thumb pressed the 'call' button, he shot a glance at Minkowski, who still had tear tracks drying on her cheeks. He looked at his legs, still mostly useless but getting less so by the day. He looked at the ceiling, which was silly because Hera wasn't actually in the ceiling, but he always looked up when talking to Hera anyway so why stop now? Somewhere, Mr. Cutter was getting his. Somewhere, a bit further out, other missions like theirs were getting notified that they could, finally, come back home. And here, right here, in no time at all, Eiffel would be with all the people he still cared about under one roof, enjoying getting drunk and finally laughing about all the horrible things that they had gone through together.

            And he was happy.

           


End file.
